The Day Nelson Mandela Blew My Mind
South Africa. February. 1990.
After Mandela's release, his face and words were broadcast incessantly around the world. First impressions? Honestly, once you got past all the fuss the great man was kind of boring.
Mandela couldn’t whip up a crowd like the current generation of leaders on the left like Jesse Jackson or Neil Kinnock or Andrew Cumo, and couldn't come close to matching the cosmic thunder and foot fire his wife, Winnnie Mandela, could bring to a public event. As for the swooping pulpit rhetorical flourishes of the old time greats like Martin Luther King, forget it. Mandela looked and sounded like an elderly law clerk who been passed over every top job in his firm. Could this really be the political messiah everyone had been marching and screaming about for twenty-seven years? No way!
Like millions of others I stayed glued to the TV screens and obsessively watched every press conference and interview Mandela gave. The reports were coming in. Mandela was charming. Mandela had real grace under pressure. He was a walking, talking saint.
I couldn't understand what these wide-eyed, sycophantic commentators were talking about! The man had been locked up for decades! Surely, he wanted some revenge? He was a former soldier of the revolution! He knew how to shoot people!
Twenty- seven years!
That’s a long time to think about fucking over everyone who fucked you over.
To have stayed sane in that prison cell, to have endured the loss of his family, his dignity, his freedom, his future, Mandela had be made of reinforced tungsten steel. Surely, behind his perfectly beatific Uncle Ben’s rice smile he had to be thinking something; something like…
Yeah, I’m gonna invite De Klerk and Botha and their whole families over to my place for a afternoon braai. I’ll show them a black man can throw the best South African braai ever! The best thick steaks! The best boerewors! I’ll entertain the kids with some clowns. Johnny Clegg, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba will be doing their thing in the background. Then I’ll stand up, make a nice speech and thank everyone for coming. And just when those bastards think they’re safe I’m bringing the fucking guns out. Everyone dies horribly. Lots of blood. Lots of screams. Lots of dead AWB fuckers who should have known better. Everyone will get the message: I’m back. I’m in charge and its payback time.
I imagined Mandela thinking these thoughts, because I imagined him to be much like myself; an ordinary human being. An ordinary human being who shared a brown epidermis like mine and had experienced even more of the slights and injustices that came with being born into our brown fraternity; and if I was that pissed about the racism I’d dealt with, imagine how the old man must have felt!
To be honest, I couldn't understand or relate to the forgiving, tolerant man who was dominating the weekly news cycles. A flash on anger, after all he'd been through, would have been expected and understood. Surely, he had the right to lash out at those who had oppressed him. Was it possible that the transition from the NATS to the ANC was going to happen without even a tiny bit of righteous retaliatory blood spilling? Didn't the ANC's enemies need a public arse-kicking so that everyone knew where they stood in the new dispensation?
Was I confused? Clearly.
And then... one day... I watched Mandela meet with a diverse group of South African children from many ethnic backgrounds. It was a wonderful way of selling the old revolutionary as everyone’s favourite cuddly grandfather. I watched and got ready to puke. When was this saintly make over going to stop?
I’m not sure if the kids understood who Mandela was. They certainly knew he was “important” and they had to pay attention. Mandela spoke of being a grandfather and told all the children he regarded them as his own grandchildren.
I couldn’t believe what the old man saying. Some of these white kids probably had parents who had supported his detention and profited professionally from apartheid! Mandela was telling these kids he loved them as his own flesh and blood! And they believed him!
Surely, this couldn’t be right. After twenty-seven years of struggle, twenty-seven lost years he could never get back, Mandela was offering these fresh-faced white children his love. He was also implicitly offering them (and their parents) his protection and a future: He was telling them I am the president of your country. I love you and you have nothing to fear. You are welcome to stay because this is your country too.
I struggled to believe what I was watching. How could any man be this good? This strong?
I didn’t know the answer then, and now twenty seven since his release I still don’t. All I knew was that he was a better human being than me. And I was grateful for that. It was good to turn on the television and see a man, a leader, a president of a nation who was a better human being than the man I saw in the mirror.
isn't this what we all want from our leaders. To look at them. To look up at them. To know that they face the greatest challenges of the day and are better equipped than ourselves to deal with these great challenges.
During my lifetime I've seen the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, George Bush sir., Barrack Obama, Kofi Annan, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping; the only time I have felt a national office was occupied by a person of an indisputably higher quality than myself or anyone else I knew, was during Mandela's term. And the feeling was wonderful.
I say this with full acknowledgement that Mandela was not perfect. Like all of us he was inevitably flawed.
Faults and all he was still the best.
Perhaps, the greatest crime the Nats committed was taking Mandela's best years away from him and leaving him too few years of good health and strength to build a lasting legacy that was impervious to the weaknesses of those who followed him.